Making Flippy Floppy

(Dear innocent reader: the following entry may be NSFW and not meant for the easily offended. Simmer down now.) It seems that as I've gotten older, birthdays have lost a lot of their novelty. As children, most of us got so totally pants-wettingly excited about our birthdays, they were such a big whoop. The hype starts at age one, when we weren't even old enough to know what the heck was going on, but were still sucked in by the party action, the colorful balloons, the sugary cake, and the glitz of the gift wrap. Year after year, we were spoiled on our birthdays, we got things we didn't really need that people couldn't really afford to buy us. The whole extended family, the neighbors, and all your school mates show up for your birthday when you're a kid - it's a major event. Birthday parties are for children and the elderly. Children because it's fun to watch their uninhibited glee and the elderly because we are amazed they're still alive to see another year. In between, birthdays can be kind of a drag. No one really loves the idea of turning a year older, and we are subconsciously bitter because no-one makes a big of a deal out of it as much as they did when we were kids. We feel awkward because if we want people to know our big day is coming up, we have to sort of advertise it, which makes us feel a bit like we're just fishing for gifts and attention. We set our expectations for the day too high and are inevitably let down. Every April 11, I try to make the best of it. No-one has ever thrown a surprise party for me, and they're lucky because if they did they'd be dead. I like to know about stuff ahead of time, surprises are not my thing. Still, it would be quite nice if one of my nearest and dearest would pull off some gala event for me on my birthday, but since that's yet to happen, I always plan and arrange a little gathering for myself. I decided to celebrate my big 35th last night, a few days early, since I was already planning on performing at M-n-M's open mike. I sent out invites a few weeks ago via text messages and MySpace and pretty much everyone I invited showed up except three people who I really wished would have been able to make it. One lives out of town, so he's excused, but the other two called one right after another at the very last minute to crap out and I was way bummed. So there was a little black raincloud hovering over me as I entered the bar. DJ Jason and Amber were the first ones there. Tessa was tending bar and she made me a frothy and very strong Surfer on Acid for my birthday drink. My dark cloud turned into a warm golden dawn, and after Jhanie and Sara showed up, my sun came all the way up. Seriously, you can't be in a bad mood with Jhanie around - he's hilarious, and I was so glad he showed up because I knew my birthday would be wild and memorable. Jhanie handed me a big shiny gift bag stuffed with newspaper and 1. a Van Gogh action figure, 2. a smoking ceramic monkey, 3. a roll of temporary tattoo tape that says "Rock-n-Roll", and 4. a bottle of Bawlz. Yay! Random and bizarre stuff, just what I like! Next, Colleen showed up with a giant mylar birthday balloon ten times the size of my big fat head. And speaking of big fat head, the bright yellow gift bag the balloon was attached to had a picture of a gigantic hard schlong. Yes, you can always count on the Weenis for some penis. I told her I was going to re-gift the bag with a bottle of wine in it for Grandma next Christmas. Inside the bag, the dicks continued - the card featured a well-endowed black gentleman lounging in the sun (what it said, I do not recall), a "penis pop" sucker, and a hot pink vibrating dong with bumps. It's always handy to have a friend that works in a sex shop. She was even kind enough to include some batteries (EverReady, of course) so we could fire it up right there and then. We discovered that the vibrating action made it "dance" when placed end up on a flat surface. Alex and Steve showed up and pretended to act shocked and horrified by the sight of a neon pink dancing dildo doing circles around the table. The darned thing became the hit of the party, shimmying it's way into everyones hearts despite the apparent presence of genital warts. I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but it's a real conversation piece and actually, it felt great on my stiff neck. Mark was crabby about performing his songs and told me "tonight's all yours." I only had eight songs ready to roll, and I really only wanted to do four. I was relieved when after 6 songs, I saw a newbie show up with his guitar and handed the mike over to him. I enjoyed doing my songs for everyone, but was anxious to get my birthday on as well. While I was on stage, Jessi had come and gone (she had a tattoo to give and couldn't stay) but she left behind a huge chocolate caramel cake that will haunt my fridge for a week. Also, Brett came and left right before I was done with my songs and I didn't even get to say hi. Odd duck. However, Katrina was at the table when I rejoined and she immediately handed me her phone and it was her brother, my long lost Simon Jones. I hadn't chatted with Simon in many moons, so that was a treat, and he was crazy as ever, yelling the "Happy Birthday" song in my ear at the tops of his very loud lungs. The guy that showed up after me for open mike was awesome, playing guitar and singing his own original songs which were intense and slightly demented in a Kristin Hersh sort of way. He was enormously talented and had everyone going silent to listen a couple of times. Plus, we all agreed he was a hottie - I wanted to chat him up about Flexible Records and la dee da, but he snuck out before anyone even got his name. We can only hope he makes open mike a habit. Next, everyone did exactly the thing I hate - the whole crew went up front and sang me "Happy Birthday." I'd had just enough Heineken that for a moment I got a little sentimental and felt like a kid on his birthday again, eating up the attention. Everyone left pretty early - some people had to work at 5 the next morn, some had to relieve babysitters, and some were headed up to Sunset Bowling Alley for another birthday party for some girl they kept calling "Polly Pocket." I don't know Polly Pocket, but told them to send birthday wishes to her from Patrick Pocket. When everyone was gone, I sat at the bar with Christa and chatted for quite awhile before sneaking home. I attacked Jessi's caramel cake with a mad vengeance and drifted off to Iron Chef...not such a terrible birthday after all.

Labels: Birthday, Hot Pink Vibrating Dildo, OTV Live, Strange Happenings